In Europe and in Japan, patent applications are publicly disclosed after 18 months from the filing date regardless of whether a patent has been or will be registered. In the U.S. in contrast, patent applications are publicly disclosed only when a patent is granted. In this paper we examine the...

One of the most significant and robust characteristics of decision making is persistence. An example of this is brand loyalty -- the repeat purchase of new products of the same brand. This paper attempts to show that previous explanations of this phenomenon (switching costs, habit and unobserved...

We quantity an amount of cross-sectional income and consumption smoothing achieved within subgroups of states, such as regions or clubs, e.g. the club of rich states.

We develop a model of firm size in which firms are unable to access as many consumers as they want. Nwely arrived consumers match randomly with firms. Subsequently consumers must pay "search costs"to be able to switch firms.

What are the cyclical properties of U.S. state and local government fiscal policy? The budget surplus of local and, in particular, state governments is procyclical, smoothing disposable income and consumption of state residents. This happens over both short- and medium-term horizons. Procyclical...

We remove the aggregate US-wide component in US state level disposable income and consumption and find that state-specific consumption exhibits substantially less excess sensitivity to lagged state-specific disposable income than if the aggregate component is not controlled for. This is evidence...

A consumer has to make a consumption decision. She is modeled as making a binary decision regarding a suggested change to her status quo. An affective package refers to the totality of affective responses that the consumer is expected to have to the various aspects of this decision. It is...

We measure the amount of smoothing achieved through various components of the government deficit in Eu and OECD countries. For EU countries, at the 1-year frequency, 13 % of shocks to GDP are smoothed via government consumption, 18 percent via transfers, 5 % via subsidies, while taxes provide no...